Insane Coup Posse – OC’s Gallery of MAGA Goofballs & Terrorists!

A “Crowd-Sourced” Resource

(Which’ll Be Under Construction for a While)

“HEY – it’s early January 2021 and we’re on our way to DC to STOP THE STEAL!” Photo from San Francisco Airport,which was a stop for OC folks. Three people identified so far: Joe “Magapit” Vargas at left, Anna “Smart Conservative” Elizabeth next to him.  And near the rear right with long hair is Sacramento’s Jorge Riley who’s been arrested and now indicted on five counts.

First rule of Insane Coup Posse: NOT JUST ANY CRAZY O.C. TRUMP LOVER will qualify for our Gallery of MAGA Goofballs and Terrorists.  It takes some doing: It’s not enough simply to have supported the Worst President in American History, or to be willfully wrong about countless things.  It takes more than that.

Violence and terrorism will qualify you easily.  Apart from that, your behavior on behalf of the whole Trump-associated panoply of social pathologies  (white supremacy, Proud Boys/Boogaloo, anti-vaxx, anti-mask, immigrant bashing, school-shooting truthism, climate change denial, QAnon swallowing,  and election rejection) must be obnoxious or ridiculous enough to have gotten you a lot of attention.

If you were in DC January 6, you will be counted in the Insane Coup Posse.  You may or may not have broken any laws or had anything to do with the deaths, injuries, thefts and vandalism at the Capitol that day, but law enforcement WILL ask you, rightly, to tell them everything you can.  And, truth be told, the REST of us are kind of MAD at you for travelling 2600+ miles just to try to invalidate all our votes.

Secondly, this is an OC-centric list, as this is an OC-centric blog, but we will include troublemakers from neighboring counties if they’ve caused trouble here. 

And thirdly, this will be in progress for a while, so SEND ALL YOUR TIPS and SUGGESTIONS if they can be verified!  And if you ARE a Trumpy who feels slighted being left out of the Insane Coup Posse, by all means contact us and apply.  Without further ado (we wish it were adieux), in alphabetical order:

Marco Alcaraz (Garden Grove)

Marco is partial to throwing down the White Power sign, even though he seems to be Filipino or something…

We first became aware of this strange young Garden Grove man when he came to the Dec. 6, 2020 “Stop the Steal” rally across 17th from Santa Ana College, and participated in the “Bristol Melee,” helping to beat up three local guys who were just trying to get away.  Young Marco’s contributions that day were threefold, and difficult to achieve with just two hands:

  • just barely hanging on to a vicious German Shepherd who was straining at the leash to attack ANYBODY;
  • pepper-spraying people in the face who were just trying to get away – a FELONY, I believe; and
  • capturing ALL of it on a video which he uploaded onto YouTube and is STILL up, the dummy, showing himself and half a dozen others committing highly illegal acts of violence.

But then Marco, like everyone else in this collection, does not seem the brightest bulb in the chandelier – or even conversant in English for such an apparent nativist.  He named his video channel “Freedom Lively Watch” – a sort of ESL phrase reminiscent of “Joy Luck Club” or “Big ! Lots.”  Watch Marco do his thing, and marvel at his labeling the three passersby as “thugs.”  (Also in this video – Joe Vargas, Allie Cantera, and Kim Sorgente – see below.)

  • Went to DC Jan. 6? We don’t know.

Dr. Jeffrey Barke (Rossmoor)

plus Mari Barke, Dr. Simone Gold, & John Strand

This outspoken and flamboyant anti-mask “doctor,” like a few other characters in this collection, really deserves his own story.  For now at least, we can share a white paper we’ve received on Barke; also, the Twitter user “Dr. Jeffrey Barke’s Forehead” is useful.

It’s impossible to quantify the damage fanatical anti-maskers like Barke have inflicted on this County’s lives, health and economy, especially when they present themselves as medical authorities.  The Trump campaign recruited him this past spring to attack public health experts like Dr. Fauci, the CDC director, and the US Surgeon General, to provide cover for prematurely re-opening the economy.  And Supervisor (now Congressmember) Michelle Steel hand-picked him to be OC’s “Emergency Medical Care Commissioner” – no wonder our County has fared so poorly during the pandemic!  

Hoag Hospital, with whom the family medical concierge physician had only out-patient privileges (meaning he’s only allowed to REFER patients to the hospital) rushed to distance themselves from him when he notoriously waved a gun, proclaiming that to be better protection from Coronavirus than a mask, in this video with fellow anti-masker Peggy Hall (also see her entry below) :

But to tell the truth, the relationship between Hoag and Barke had been strained for a while before that:

Earlier this month, on Sept. 10, Hoag filed a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court against Barke, his partner Kenneth Cheng and their company PersonalCare Physicians of Newport Beach. The suit alleges that the doctors owe $517,452 in management fees, stating, “Hoag reserves all rights to pursue and obtain an order of eviction.” Hoag’s lawsuit claims that Barke and Cheng have “experienced financial problems from nearly the beginning of their operations.”

What can we say? The apple doesn’t fall far from the Trump Tree.  (See Hoag’s lawsuit here.)

Depressingly, far from being part of a rightwing fringe, Barke is firmly entrenched in the OC GOP establishment – current OC GOP Central Committee Member, Endorsement Chair of the Lincoln Club, and a former Los Al School Board Member (voters defeated him because of his advocacy of creationism and climate change denial.)  And the damage he does to this county is compounded by his wife Mari, an elected member of the OC Board of Education who’s been pushing for months for schools to re-open prematurely.  The other notable thing about Mari is that her main job on the OCBOE is to unquestioningly approve any and all Charter Schools, including one – the proposed Orange County Classical Academy – that her husband is invested in. 

The Barkes don’t seem to have gone to DC for the insurrection, but Dr. Simone Gold, Jeffrey’s partner in the fringe medical group “America’s Frontline Doctors” which advocates for hydroxychloroquine and against vaccines and lockdowns, was there with her boyfriend John Strand, and both were arrested in late January.

“America’s Frontline Doctors” with Barke and Gold circled.
Below: On Twitter, “Toxic Wooden Women” is a fine Simone Gold researcher.

  • Went to DC Jan. 6? Apparently not, but his partners did and have been arrested.

Leandra Blades (Yorba Linda)

This newly elected member of the Placentia Yorba Linda Unified School Board did go to DC on Jan 6, as part of what she disarmingly calls a “girls’ trip… to see President Trump speak,” and insists that she did not Storm the Capitol or do anything else illegal.  She was one of the folks early on who blamed the violence absurdly on “Antifa dressed as Patriots.”  Many in her local community has been asking for her resignation.

On the school board she stands out as a strong opponent of Black Lives Matter curriculum and many other progressive educational goals, but she insists (as nearly everyone does about themselves) that she is “not a racist.”  And from her FB profile (right) you can see that she considers mask mandates as something “patriots” should fight against.

Yorba Linda is second only to HB as a hotbed for angry Trump supporters and nativists, such as the Proud Boys and Boogaloo Boys who surrounded Tatiana Turner’s car at the September BLM protest at Nixon Library, and we could use some more tips from that corner of the County.  One thing’s obvious – Yorba Linda doesn’t much care for Black Lives Matter.  Here’s Blades in her own words:

  • Went to DC Jan. 6, may not have broken laws but should be questioned.

Rick Brown (Huntington Beach)

At Tito’s campaign headquarters: Rick, Michelle Peterson, and Tito.

On January 10 when I wrote my “HB to DC – Michelle Peterson” story, I’d noted that Rick Brown had posted excitedly on his FB wall Dec. 28 that he’d got on a Trump Bus at the HB Pier just to get to DC TEN DAYS LATER!  I marveled at the time these folks must have on their hands, wondered how they could afford to leave their work so long (or who was funding them) and noted that he had no posts up for the critical time between then and mid-January.  I see that now he’s also deleted his Dec. 28 post.

Tito’s campaign manager is on the lam, apparently – how adventurous is that?!

But Tito’s campaign manager did storm the Capitol on the 6th and was caught on camera (right) and apparently the FBI is looking for him.  Is Tito’s campaign manager on the lam?

Looking at the picture above, I consider that longtime HB residents say the same thing about both Rick and Michelle (and maybe Tito as well) – they used to be such nice, friendly, and non-political people.  Something about Trump and all the Trump-related web of conspiracy theories REALLY FUCKED THEM UP – I am sure that MOST of these folks sincerely believe that their country and their freedom is doomed with Trump gone and Democrats in charge.  WHO WILL TALK ALL THESE PEOPLE DOWN?

  • Went to DC Jan. 6?  YES! And wanted.

Allie “Ashley” Cantera

Back to the Dec. 6 Bristol melee, where this deceptively docile-looking young Trump-Latina, wearing an “Orange Panthers” sweater, helpfully grabbed the can of mace from Marco Alcaraz (above) who was struggling between his German Shepherd and his cameraphone, and went over to spray the poison into the faces of the local guys who were on their backs already, getting beat up. 

Later on, when people on Facebook criticized her illegal and cruel actions, “Mace Girl” pouted that her critics were guilty of closed-minded racism, that they just could not accept a Latina who supported Trump.

What a dummy, and what a dangerous dummy.  I hope the SAPD have at least spoken to her, we’ve given them all the help we can.  

(BTW a lot of that is NOT what happened)

  • Went to DC Jan. 6?  Dunno – but SAPD SHOULD be after her.

Leigh Dundas (Costa Mesa)

Now HERE’s one who should be INSTITUTIONALIZED.  Calling herself a “human rights attorney,” she has been known to shriek at a thousand words per minute for all the worst causes – anti-vaccines, Scientology, anti-masks.  Like many women in the Insane Coup Posse, Leigh has a fake charity with a fake address – I guess that’s a “thing” for anti-masker females.

OC Scientology researcher Tony Ortega says Leigh has been a high-ranking Scientologist for at least ten years, and “Although Scientology itself had no prohibitions against vaccines, L. Ron Hubbard’s withering criticisms of western medicine had produced a legacy of paranoia in the church and a membership that tended to embrace conspiracy theories about medicine and medical providers. In other words, Scientologists tend to be Alex Jones-style conspiracy advocates and anti-vaxx promoters.”  (Tony and I didn’t know each other until today, March 2, after he got an anonymous call saying “We know you work with Vern Nelson.”  Thanks for the connection, Leigh.)

Here she is at the Board of Supervisors last June, announcing the address of County Health Officer Nichole Quick and calling for her harassment at home (for giving the County a mask order).  Soon after this, the rallies in her front yard and death threats being more than she and her children could take, Dr. Quick resigned.  Dundas gained a dark fame for this deed, and a celebrity status on the looney fringe – but how did she suffer no legal consequences?

You just KNOW this banshee couldn’t stay away from the Capitol Insurrection of January 6, and My God was she loud and shrill. She deleted the videos of her harangues there, but my thoughtful friends have saved them, and we thoughtfully share them here. Is Leigh Dundas now, finally, wanted by law enforcement? Well, SHE probably thinks so at least, because SHE’S NOW IN MEXICO LOL! (Change banshee to llorona.)

  • Went to DC Jan. 6?  Definitely, and is apparently hiding in Mexico now (see below.)

Leigh Dundas (left rear) hiding out with her eccentric friends south of the border last week.
No, we can’t figure out what this “Greater Reset” is either, that they’re anticipating.
Look it up here – do you think we should be worried?

Kristopher Dreww  (HB)

With the big man, and alone.

This freaky little hairdresser has gotten quite enough press attention already with his hysterics.  Convinced that it’s the most FASCINATING thing in the world that he’s both pro-Trump and gay, he calls himself the “Adorable Deplorable” – but the question is begged: adorable to whom but himself?  Like many of HB’s rightwingers, he has spent a LOT of the last few years stalking progressive OVSD President Gina Clayton-Tarvin.  By now the whole world knows that he went to DC, stormed the Capitol, filmed himself boasting about how violent the whole thing was and how proud he was of that, freaked out soon after and apologized, blamed it on Antifa and cried that he was “in fear for his life” and was receiving death threats from both left and right.  Kristopher appears to be in the advanced stages of meth-induced schizophrenia, and we can only pray for him.

  • Went to DC Jan. 6?  YES and law enforcement knows him intimately.

Anna “Smart Conservative” Elizabeth

Lady at airport, Anna’s IG photo

Anna Elizabeth (thought to hail from LA, last name currently unknown) broadcasts on OAN (the far-out Trumpy network) as, LOL, “Smart Conservative.”  This name is ironic, because it really SMARTS to think of these people as “conservative” – these authoritarian insurrectionists.  We’re including her in this list because many think that she is the collagen to the right of Joe Vargas in our SF Airport picture.  Which would mean she went to DC on Jan 6.  What do you think?

Anna’s Instagram page displays many examples of the smartness of her conservatism:

…and she can even SAY stuff too, as this old QAnon man discovered at last year’s Beverly Hills Freedom Rally!

UPDATE LATE FEBRUARY:  Here is Anna with her “old friend” Proud Boy leader and seditionist Enrique Tarreo, at this week’s CPAC Clownshow.  It is unclear whether, as some have suggested, Anna is also a member of the “Oath Queefers.

  • Went to DC Jan. 6?  If that’s her in the pic.

Cassandra Ferragamo (HB)

If we haven’t terrified you yet…

Ferragamo, Peterson, Simon

When I first published the above photo in my Michelle Peterson piece, I didn’t know who that creature on the left was, but half of HB quickly responded – it’s Cassandra Ferragamo, the big loud anti-mask lady!  (One thing I’ll do before this piece is finished is go back to look at some of those crazy anti-mask speeches at the Board of Supervisors this past summer and fall – I’ll probably find ones by many of the people here (besides that famous Dundas one.)

But by this point Cassandra was more notorious for something else.  I mean, besides being the wife of a top skinhead gang leader.  Wait, I gotta squeeze some more photos in here somehow…

Cassandra was not in DC on Jan 6 to Storm the Capitol.  And why not?  Because she decided to go to a “Stop the Steal” rally in LA instead.  Black people live in LA, lots of them, and Cassandra does not like black people – neither apparently did a lot of her fellow Trumpies.  When 25-year old Berlinda Nibo passed by on her way home, oozing melanin and sporting her new purple weave, the all-white Trump crowd took a keen interest in the only black person around and shouted out, “Did you vote for Trump?”  After some time of trying to ignore the crowd, Belinda shot back, “No!” flipped them off and kept talking on her phone.

This would not stand.

Cassandra all in black, yanking off Berlinda’s wig.

As the Times tells it

Someone shoved her from behind. Another man knocked her phone out of her hand, scratching her face in the process.

Then a woman [Ferragamo] reached up and grabbed her long, wavy mahogany wig — a brand-new hairpiece Nibo wore for the first time Wednesday in celebration of the new year — and tore it off.

Nibo said she punched the woman in the face.

A video posted later showed Ferragamo, holding a Trump flag in one hand and Nibo’s wig in another: “I did that,” she boasted. “I did the first scalping of the new civil war.” The crowd around her roared in cheers.

The jabs to Nibo came rapidly. A hit to her shoulder. Pepper spray streamed into her face.

“You know the scenes in cartoons when the villagers were coming at you with pitchforks and fire and all that? Literally, I thought that was it,” she said. “I’m going to be on the front page: A young African American girl has been beaten to death on the streets of downtown L.A.”

Soon, a burly man came from behind and held Nibo, strapping her arms to her sides so she couldn’t move. In photographs taken by Natalicchio, a person sprays Nibo in the face while the man holds her.

“I’m thinking I’m dead right here, these people are trying to kill me,” she said. “For the life of me, I can’t figure out why. These people don’t know me. I don’t know you people. Why are you so angry?”

Pepper spray does that to your eyes.

In the viral storm that ensued after Natalicchio posted her photos, social media users lambasted the man, who is shown in other videos as part of the protest, for subduing Nibo while she was attacked.

But Nibo said in an interview Thursday that the man, Roy Ball, started whispering in her ear, “It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK. Calm down,” and “I’m not going to hurt you.”

A news release issued Thursday by the LAPD said Ball “appears to have been a good Samaritan, shielding and helping the woman.”

But forget the Good Samaritan, this is about Cassandra Ferragamo, getting the first scalp of the New Civil War, against black people!  But perhaps you’re not getting the whole Cassandra picture – for that we’ll need Tik Tok:

pt 1. Fighting off Black Lives Matters protesters in Downtown HB.
pt 2. Dancing with fellow anti-masker Lenka Koloma at one of those HB pier Covid curfew protests –
“After Ten o’ clock, baby!” (Get it? They’re breaking a Newsome rule!)
“So many beautiful people!” (um…riggghhht.)

And most revealingly, pt 3:
“I was dragged away by a mental health group with firearms,
I had some reptilian psychopaths with their eyes shape-shifting in front of me,
and I swear to God you guys .. REAL SHIT! and and and and”

@greg_dude_diss

##fyp ##orangecounty ##alisoviejo ##sanclemente ##lagunaniguel ##lagunahills ##lakeforest ##laderaranch ##danapoint ##lagunabeach ##longbeach ##blm ##biden2020

♬ original sound – Jonah_Jonah

  • Went to DC Jan. 6?  NO.  Busy with hate crimes in LA. DA Gascón, WHERE ARE YOU???

Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet

This fellow has a pretty interesting Wikipedia page, which calls him “an American neo-Nazianti-semitic conspiracy theoristExtremely Online social media personality and former  rapper who gained attention through his advocacy on behalf of alt-right and white supremacist ideology, and through his promotion of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories such as white genocide and Jewish control of the media.

He seems pretty unstable, teetering back and forth over the years between far-right hate and anti-racism activism.  It’s amusing to read the genesis of his nickname – he’s dealt with his share of alcohol and addiction issues.  Based largely in LA, we include him in this OC-centric list because of his close relationship with HB’s most alt-right wannabe politician, Gracey Van Der Mark.  Anyway, long story short, Baked Alaska Stormed the Capitol January 6, and got arrested.

  • Went to DC Jan. 6?  Yes, and The Law Won!

Peggy Hall, anti-masker

Damn you. Do not think of horse. Or teeth.

Peggy Hall is one of Orange County’s best known anti-mask activists, and by now as you may not be surprised to learn, there are inevitably rivalries over who’s the best anti-mask activist – for example, Peggy Hall and Lenka Koloma will each be glad to tell you how lame and ineffective the other one is.  But to down-to-earth Peggy, it is all so simple, it really is.  The mask over your nose and mouth make it a little harder to breathe, and it’s not as comfortable as not wearing one.  This is your body TELLING you, in the most commonsense way possible – masks are BAD for you!  And any laws or policies trying to get you to wear one are infringements on our God-given American liberty.

Like all self-respecting female OC anti-mask activist, Peggy has a fake charity, this one called “The Healthy American.org.”  In the next few days (early February) I’ll look through those wild anti-mask speeches from the summer Board of Supervisors meetings, and find one or two good Peggy ones.  but for now, you can enjoy her trying to get on a Southwest flight without a mask, courtesy of the wonderful people at Reddit!

Orange County anti-masker Peggy Hall is not allowed to board a Southwest flight, causes a scene at the airport. from r/PublicFreakout

  • Went to DC Jan. 6?  Don’t know. Probably didn’t fly Southwest if she did.

Alan Hostetter (San Clemente)

Six views of the enigmatic whacko Alan Hostetter.

Like Barke and Dundas, Hostetter should really have his own story, he’s that freaky.  And actually he has one now, written just this week by my new friend Washington Post civil liberties reporter Radley Balko, entitled “Meet the Police Chief Turned Yoga Instructor Prodding Wealthy Suburbanites to Civil War.”  Well, you can’t squeeze much more into that title.  The story’s behind a paywall, but I’ll quote a little.

After reveling in the novelty of an ex-military former La Habra police chief morphing into a New Age South County Yoga guru, Radley quotes an anonymous source who knows Alan well and puts this past year into better context:

With goofy but violent Russ Taylor to the right.

“I watched over the last year as he spiraled from this calm yoga instructor to a nutty guy who would yell at you on the street if he caught you wearing a mask,” says one of Hostetter’s former yoga students. (Some of the Orange County residents I interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying they fear retaliation from Hostetter and his supporters.) “He brought a lot of people from that [yoga] community with him. As his social media posts got crazier, he’d get support and likes from all these moms and housewives.”

A protest to open the beaches brought some surfers on board. A mask-burning rally to open restaurants attracted business owners and what one resident describes as the “wine moms.” The George Floyd protests sparked warnings that criminals and antifa violence were headed to the affluent suburbs…

It sounds to me like the disease of Trumpism fucked this guy up as bad as some other formerly nice people in this Posse!  He calls his anti-lockdown group “American Phoenix Project” and look! – you can donate to that too!  Alan’s inseparable South County comrades are Morton Irvine Smith and Russ Taylor, both of whom I’ll be writing about (below) soon.  And I believe all three have been arrested for Storming the Capitol.  (Not sure about Morton.)

Below: Here comes what Larry Tenney calls “South County’s finest”
Russ at left, Alan at right, and in between,
the drug-addled anti-masker Morton Irvine Smith (Irvine heir)
showing a sort of Steve Bannon je-ne-sais-quoi…

So why would the FBI arrest Alan? One clue could be this Dec. 5 speech brought to us by Mother Jones’ David Corn, in which Alan passionately calls for the execution of the “masterminds” of this election theft – which I guess means all Democrats and some Republicans.  (Bonus OC nostalgia in this video – you can see Dana Rohrabacher‘s dopey cabbage head!)

Lenka Koloma (Laguna Niguel)

Mirror Mirror on the wall, who’s the most ratchet Anti-Mask Hag of them all?  And before you go with the easy rhyme, “Dundas or Hall,” please grant some consideration to Laguna Niguel Czech-American Lenka Koloma!

Before Covid came around Lenka billed herself as a “detox expert” [pause for you to say “checks out”] who can “unleash transformative powers within you.” You saw her above dancing joyously with white-supremacist hate-criminal Cassandra Ferragamo at an HB curfew-breaking rally, crowing about what “beautiful people” they are.

Like Dundas and Hall, like Amber and Hostetter, Lenka has her OWN fake charity you can donate to – hers is called the Freedom to Breathe Agency, which does its best to impersonate a government agency, and provides fraudulent “mask exemption cards” purporting to exempt the bearer from health regulations because they have the condition of needing to breathe.  One place she forced her breath on over the long hot COVID summer was a Mothers’ Market in Laguna Woods (which, forgive me, seems like a municipality that ESPECIALLY needs health precautions.) 

Also, like the other ladies mentioned, Lenka has her own dedicated Twitter researcher, someone named @InMinivanHell, who makes sure all Lenka’s scurvy antics are preserved for posterity and law enforcement.  Here’s Lenka in action at a San Diego Sprout’s:  

February 20 update: Look how Lenka’s 2020 efforts to subvert public health have spread into the New Year AND lovely Florida (sometimes known as “The Huntington Beach of the USA.”)  Two Florida men arrested for impersonating US Marshals, brandishing Lenka’s official-looking “Freedom to Breathe Agency” cards, and threatening hotel employees for trying to make them wear masks – just this week!  What a legacy.

  • Went to DC Jan. 6?  Not that we know of.

Whitney Laws?? (Palm Springs / HB)

We’re only maybe including Whitney “Teal Sparkle” Laws because some HB folks who know her well are pretty sure she’s at the front left of the SF Airport photo, meaning she might have gone to DC.  What do you all think?  If not, she hasn’t done anything spectacular enough to be in the Posse, much as she might love herself some Trump … unless she WANTS to be included?

Is that you, Whitney?

  • Went to DC Jan. 6?  Don’t know.

Dominic Menaldi (HB)

Ah, finally the DOM SAGA.  Or SAGAS.  Fables with lessons in them for all of us – and the fables are true!  In this section I’ll be relying heavily on the scholarship of Vince Crandon, Surf City’s leading Dom Researcher.

Like many of these folks who have been corrupted by the Trump years, Dom was once a beloved Surf City character – a good-humored 300-pound bouncer who was known in the 90’s for wrestling actual bears.  And since around 2002 he became even better known for transforming his SE HB house into a “castle” – the Castle House – a special attraction to children of all ages every Halloween!

The year 2020 was difficult for all of us.  And for people like Dom who get their news and opinions from certain limited sources and surround themselves with the likeminded, 2020 seemed a double assault – from a deep-state-planned and exaggerated pandemic which was just an excuse for liberals to close down businesses and make us all wear masks, and also from dangerous violent Black Lives Matter protesters and Antifas who wanted nothing more than to burn down towns like Huntington Beach.  So naturally our joyful warrior attended lots of anti-mask rallies, as well as showing up to counter-protest HB BLM rallies, while getting in everybody’s face, maskless.


(pic by Mandy Rosen)

And, inevitably…

Instant Karma, everybody thought, and the virus hit Dom hard, but once the tough guy recovered everybody felt free to laugh at him.  On the other hand, how does a Trumpy with all his belief systems and victim mentality process something like this?  Does he say, “I was wrong, I should listen to science, wear masks and convince all my friends to do the same?”  OF COURSE NOT.  Dom blamed his brush with coronavirus on Black Lives Matter, claiming that part of their plot to destroy peaceful prosperous places like HB was to purposely spread the virus here.  He even wrote that if he died it should be considered MURDER BY BLACK LIVES MATTER. (Never mind that 90%+ of BLM people wore masks.)  We kept laughing at Dom but more angrily.

And then we stopped laughing again when popular 71-year old “social butterfly” Vera Pavelec, who had partied maskless at Tumbleweed’s with Dom and a few others, caught the virus and died.  (Good article by Susan Goulding.)

But back to Dom.  The Ways of Karma are deep and complex, and it seems that when someone draws the wrong lesson and blames their well-deserved misfortune on someone else, they could be in for a double-whammy.  And sure enough, in December, his celebrated Castle House burned down.  And he didn’t have insurance to cover it.  This also was not his fault, since he had missed his insurance payments due to the Covid BLACK LIVES MATTER HAD PURPOSELY GIVEN HIM.

And don’t feel too sorry for Dom about his house burning down.  He got outpourings of sympathy and donations, and dozens of volunteers are helping him rebuild it; here’s his GoFundMe..

These militant anti-maskers are not only a suicide cult, they’re a real drag on the rest of us as we try to defeat this plague without their help and against their active opposition.  It pisses me off that they dare to call themselves “patriots,” and that they downplay masks as a “political question” and a “personal choice.”  Oh and also, Black Lives Matter are welcome here any time!

  • Went to DC Jan. 6?  Don’t know, probably not.

Amber Nichole Miller (HB)

Surf City’s “Marjorie Cheesecake Greene”

“What about THE CHILDREN?” you moan, “Don’t you want to #SaveOurChildren???” If the thought of children going missing around the world and consigned to who knows what awful fate is something that bothers you, the organizations listed on my LONG version of this story are worth your support.  BUT we should keep the problem in a bit of perspective.  Despite Amber’s constant cries that “800,000 children go missing in the US per year – that’s nearly 2000 a day – one every FORTY SECONDS!” the FBI actually estimates “fewer than 350 children are abducted by strangers in the US every year” – and it almost never happens in places like Huntington Beach.  800,000 children versus less than 350?  That sounds about as truthful as Amber’s claims about the Ocean View School District’s sex-ed curriculum!  But we’ll get to that later.

It’s always good to put your ass on the line for something you believe in.

Do you ever wonder, where does the wild unending RAGE come from, on the MAGA side of our politics, the rage we saw at the Jan 6 Insurrection?  First, these people really seem to believe a lot of things we know not to be true, such as that the election was stolen from Trump.  But there are other things QAnon has taught them that are even more enraging – such as that American children are disappearing, one every 40 seconds, into Democrat-run trafficking rings where they are tortured and harvested for their adrenochrome, to which liberals are addicted.  You’re laughing … but close your eyes and try to imagine believing that – you would also want to burn down the Capitol.

The rash of make-believe “Save the Children” groups that popped up about a year ago, run by folks like Amber, are the gateway drug to the addictive Hard Stuff – one researcher calls it “Pastel QAnon.”  EVERYBODY wants to save the children, but then once you hear HOW MANY OF THEM ARE DISAPPEARING, you start to wonder, WHO IS TAKING THEM?  And to help you find the answers, “influencers” like Amber provide #hashtags and clues to get you over to the hardcore Q.

Like I was saying.

You really gotta see the Jan. 26 VICE News segment on Amber and her foundation, it’s only 20-something minutes, but it’s that good.  Click here, VICE lets you watch up to five shows for free.  [UPDATE – It’s no on YouTube – see bottom of this Amber story!]  But first I’ll tell you what you’ll see, in an episode Amber later called a “hatchet job,” but really lets her hang herself with her own words. 

A little over a year ago, when lots of other alt-right people were doing it, the 40-something former model and reality star suddenly took up an interest in the problem of child sex trafficking, and (being a creature of Instagram) started exploring what #hashtags would get her the most followers – surprise, most of those hashtags were associated with QAnon, even though she claims to know hardly anything about QAnon.  When the VICE interviewer mentions to her that 70% of her traffic comes from QAnon-related hashtags, Amber reacts in awed amazement:  “Really?? I’m literally in shock right now!”

Amber, literally in shock.

Unlike the august groups at the top of this story, it’s really hard to say what Amber’s doubly named organization, “Save Our Children Initiative” and “SOCIAL Foundation” actually do besides sell t-shirts and solicit donations to “meet our goals, improve conditions… [and] fund our mission.”  With the help of her long-time partner HB Mayor Pro-Tem Tito Ortiz, Amber did put on ONE workshop for worried parents, teaching them how to avoid “stranger danger” – one workshop in one year.  Our own Tito Watch reports in frustration that Amber “refuses to publish her organization’s financial records.”

Amber and a friend got a tour of DC in November from a Trump staffer and had her picture taken at the Lincoln Memorial; ten days before the Jan 6 Insurrection she retweeted that, with commentary about a coming STORM and hashtagging it January 6.  Her explanations for that, to VICE, are as garbled, mystical, and drenched in hashtag follower measurement as anything else she tries to explain.

But when the VICE interviewer tells her that talk of an oncoming “STORM” is one of the key tenets of QAnon … Amber reacts in awed amazement:  “Really?? I’m literally in shock right now!”

From the summer thru January Amber’s social media accounts got taken down in general purges of QAnon related propaganda, which Amber thinks is hell of unfair:  “I’m not making any money at all now!”  VICE shows her sitting in a living room with a couple of girlfriends – a sort of coven of  Q-influencers.  One spews the wisdom that every time you get “de-platformed” it’s a good sign – it means you’re DANGEROUS, you’re getting close to the truth!  The other two nod sagely.

At one point one of these women, supposedly ignorant of and unconnected to QAnon, drops the word “Frazzledrip,” and the interviewer asks, “What’s Frazzledrip?”  They all respond, “Oh, it’s HORRIBLE.  You don’t want to know about it.  It’s not a good place to start.”  As though knowledge of Frazzledrip is some goal to work towards, on your long journey from the starting point of #SaveOurChildren.  Frazzledrip is the belief that Hillary Clinton and her exotic aide Huma Abedin kidnapped a little girl, cut off her face, and took turns wearing it in an effort to scare her into producing a goodly amount of ADRENOCHROME that they could then ingest, and that the whole act was videotaped and is on the laptop of Huma’s ex-husband Anthony Weiner, the progressive former New York Congressman and dick-pic purveyor.  (Only the last few words are true.)  WHO THINKS UP THIS SHIT?  But belief in Frazzledrip is the end goal, to which Amber-style Pastel QAnon is the gateway.

Too un-clever by half, Amber attempts to maintain a distance from and charming ignorance of QAnon to the very end.  When questioned a little harder by VICE, she stammers, “Yeah no I mean as far as now, no, because the negative connotations to QAnon itself is CAREER-ENDING.  It is JOB-ENDING.  It can end your career.”  And that’s why we should believe her, that she knows hardly anything about it, even though she quotes it left and right.  Got it.

Bringing it Home to HB – All Politics is Local.

Well, what use is this mastery of social media, this penchant for propaganda, this blithe indifference toward truth, if you can’t use it locally against your Mayor-Pro-Tem boyfriend’s political enemies?  And so, Amber has gone to war with the Ocean View School District (which kicked Tito out for not wearing a mask when handing out turkey) and their outspoken liberal Board trustee Gina Clayton-Tarvin.

Either comically misinformed or darkly imaginative, Amber accuses Gina and OVSD of a sex-ed  curriculum that is “despicable” and would make any parent “sick to their stomach” – she “can show you some of the pages” (which she never does) and she equates it to the “grooming” of a sexual predator.  Gina angrily asked Amber to show what she’s talking about, and Amber reacted in true Instagram warrior fashion by blocking Gina.

But she went even farther in her interview with Dominick Izzo.  Who’s Izzo?  He’s a retired Chicago cop and well-known QAnon purveyor who does an internet radio show every night.  VICE features him in another Q special – Izzo is best known for pushing the theory that Michelle Obama is a man, and for calling Black Lives Matters and anyone who supports them “subhuman.”

Old Q friends – Izzo, Tito, Amber. Sharing disinfo and misinfo!

And you should hear how familiarly this Q Star welcomes Tito and Amber onto his show, “You guys need no introduction!”  At about 30 seconds past the 1-hour mark, Amber claims that “our school district” teaches “all kinds of sexual positions, anal, oral, BLOOD RITUALS”…

Do you want to actually see the sex-ed curriculum of Ocean View School District?  It is right here.  It is only four pages, but I won’t blame you if you fall asleep.  It’s as modest as can be, with an emphasis on abstinence, and it’s been the same since the 90’s.

Amber is a big liar.  Nobody should donate to her #SaveOurChildren, nobody should go to her workshops if she even has another one, and nobody should believe her.  I’m sorry.

UPDATE –

The Vice Special is Now on YouTube.  And Here.

  • Went to DC? Not Jan 6, but shortly before, and put out a CALL TO THE STORM!!

Tito Ortiz (HB)

Our own writer “Tito Watch” has all the info on the QAnon-loving, mask-eschewing HB Mayor Pro-tem that you could want, and there’s a lot more to come;  and I don’t really want to include elected officials in this list because they are already well enough known.  Still, I thought I should share this video, of when he first discovered his Holy Grail:

If you live in Surf City, you may want to visit Recall Tito on Facebook, or Recalltito.com!

  • Went to DC Jan. 6?  No, was with his kids in HB.

Arthur “Chris” Schaper (Torrance, but loves OC)

This peripatetic blowhard, the human incarnation of fingernails on a chalkboard, just made MAGA history this week – actually getting himself censored by Parler for homophobic/transphobic comments – and leaving in a huff.  Wow, I did not know and would not have guessed that Parler is NOT DOWN with homophobia/transphobia.  See how you learn something new here every day?  Maybe Arthur can find some more permissive social media platform, maybe there’s something called “Hayter.” 

Here he whines on Facebook about the indignity of being censored by Parler:

Well, this whiney prick may be from Torrance, and he may have run for Assembly in Torrance (getting 36.8%, probably every GOP vote in Torrance) but we know him well in Orange County.  If you can try to remember before 2020, before coronavirus and the post-George-Floyd resurgence of BLM, what was it that drove the Trumpies crazy here in California?  It was “ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS,” in the context of California declaring itself a Sanctuary State in defiance of Trump’s policies, and then various OC cities either affirming themselves as Sanctuary Cities or, more often, defying the state by voting to exclude themselves from the sanctuary law.  And Arthur and his little gang of immigrant haters made it to every one of those meetings.

Arthur harassing Congressman Lou Correa at a 2018 immigration forum; he and his friends were so disruptive Lou had to cancel it.

I remember in 2018 when Arthur brought a half-dozen allies to a council meeting in my town of Anaheim.  Senile racist Lucille Kring was still on the Council, and had agendized the motion that “Anaheim is NOT a Sanctuary City,” but nobody else on council of either party was eager to deal with such a controversial and irrelevant issue, so it got pulled, but Arthur didn’t get the memo.  So he and his gang stayed around, gave speeches about the evils of wetbacks, booed and cheered and chattered a lot, threw wadded up papers at the rest of us, and generally made a nuisance of themselves until they were thrown out.

With his big HB fan
Gracey Van Der Mark because,
of course!

On the way out I saw Arthur pouting in the lobby about how Anaheim had violated his First Amendment rights and he was going to sue our asses off; we all laughed at him – I figure that was a typical day in the life of Arthur.  (One of his friends was a young Persian-American, even more aggressive and racist than Arthur, who called himself “Cyrus.”  Yes, I got the reference – Cyrus, the Babylonian king who granted freedom to the Jews, and THIS racist Persian “Cyrus” was going to show us white folks the way to freedom.  I mentioned to him that David Koresh also named himself after Cyrus, but the young genius had never heard of Waco.)

Here is Arthur harassing Black Lives Matter protesters in El Segundo last month, defiantly maskless (probably knowing they wouldn’t get close to him.)  He billed this deed as some group called “California Mass Resistance” overrunning a BLM event, but apparently California Mass Resistance is a group of one that lives in Arthur’s head, which is both a relief and kind of sad.  [“Mass” Resistance LOL!]

Poring through his social media of the last two months, it seems he’s become obsessed, partly with Jesus The Lord, but even more with the evils of homosexuality.  In this recent post he even defends the genocidal anti-gay Ugandan regime.  And you know what they say about guys who are obsessed with the evils of homosexuality.  Come out, come out, Arthur Schaper, it’s a friendly world after all!

  • Went to DC Jan. 6?  NO. But at first it excited him and reminded him of “Hong Kong 2019.” And then he changed his mind and blamed it on Antifa!

Christian Secor (Costa Mesa)

Christian on right, Nick Fuentes on left – two proud “Groypers” groyping.

How is it I hear about this kid first through the media, AFTER he’s arrested?  Don’t all his fellow UCLA students who’ve been raising the alarm about him know about this blog?  THIS is the place to go to get the FBI’s attention!  Oh well I guess we’ll just catch up here…

Early Tuesday morning Feb 16, Federal agents surrounded the Costa Mesa home where this miserable and doomed 22-year old lived with his mom, and now he has found his destined prison cell, charged with “assaulting, resisting or impeding officers, civil disorder,” and much more, at the DC Capitol Jan. 6.  (I really hope the FBI catches ALL the assholes that assaulted the Capitol cops, especially the ones that killed Officer Sicknick, and I want to see their trials – this is a start.)

Christian Secor, Nick Fuentes in the picture above, and Ryan Sanchez – three good friends, young, white, clean-cut, and truly vicious scumbags – identify as “Groypers,” in fact Fuentes is the lead Groyper.  Shit, what is a Groyper and do we really have to learn another variety of racist sociopath? Yes, we do.  There has been a debate over “optics” in the white supremacist community, and the Groypers have come out on the side of looking clean and respectable, and not making too much noise.  “Hiding our power level” they like to call it.  “Entryism” is their strategy of respectably taking over local and college Republican parties, subtly winning them over to racist and fascist ideas that many Republicans still find objectionable.  (Maybe young racist Christian can pursue “entryism” in prison now.)

Secor at left, with friends at a Huntington Beach Stop the Steal rally.

But what passes as “good optics” and “respectability” may surprise you – Christian and Ryan made some waves in HB not long ago pepper-spraying an intoxicated black man under the Pier and live-streaming the deed.  As this enlightening article explains, Groypers like to find marginalized people – dark, homeless, gay – verbally harass them while live-streaming, and then at a point where “self-defense” can be feigned, pepper-spraying them.  “As nearly all Groypers are white, if the police are ever involved [as in this Secor-Sanchez incident] suspicion is usually placed on the victim of their attack.” [HEY! That sounds a lot like what Marco and Allie did to the local guys at the Dec. 6 Bristol melee!  How brave all these fuckers are.]

These chronically immature people of ALL ages are heavily into giving themselves tough-guy nicknames, and Christian Secor chose the tag “Scuffed Elliott Rodger,” in a tribute to another pathetic 22-year old who killed and injured 20 people near Santa Barbara in 2014, just because he couldn’t get laid.  From this we can deduce what we want about 22-year old Christian Secor, but I’m guessing the high point his life was sitting in Vice President Pence’s chair on Jan. 6.  [Below.] Hey, you know what?  That’s Kamala Harris’ chair now!  LOSER.

  • Went to DC Jan. 6?  DUH.  

Mark Simon (HB)

The couple in more innocent times on the Pier.

Now here’s one WE helped bust!  On January 10 we published our “From HB to DC: Michelle Peterson and her Mysterious Tanned Boyfriend Help Storm the Capitol for Trump!”  featuring a video of the tanned boyfriend breaching the Capitol doors – nobody knew his name, but everyone knew Michelle, a HB lady who used to be normal and lovable and more recently has become the OC leader of the Newsom Recall. Michelle had rashly posted a video of her special guy helping to “Stop the Steal!”  (She did take the video down but not before an anonymous friend of mine saved it and sent it to me.)

Didn’t take long for the FBI to identify him as HB’s tanned Mark Simon.  Not that he was one of the worst.  They arrested him on Jan. 28 for “restricted buildings or grounds, and unlawful activities on Capitol grounds.”  Like I said, I wish they would nab some more Capitol Cop Beaters & Killers.  Mark’s most serious offense was being really corny and inarticulate, as we transcribed his exhilarated cries in this video: First time, “In the Capitol baby — YAAAHHHH!”  Second time, “Yo.  AAAAGGGGHHHH!”  And third time, “Twenty-twenty-one-donald-TRUMP” [sticks out tongue for some reason.]   Well, we hope it was all worth it!

  • Went to DC Jan. 6?  DUH.  

Morton Irvine Smith (all over OC)

Three Seditionist South-County Stooges; Morton in the Middle. Since Covid he has acquired a Steve Bannon je-ne-sais-quoi.

A classic example of a dangerous, troublemaking black sheep whose fabulously wealthy family took pains to let the world know he had nothing to do with them any more was Osama, of the Bin Laden family.  Morton’s certainly not as bad as Osama though!  In fact, of the Three Seditionist South-County Stooges who Stormed the Capitol (Russ Taylor, Morton, and Hostetter, right), Morton is the only one who hasn’t yet had his home raided by the FBI. 

In Morton’s perception, his disowning and disinheritance by the pioneering Irvine clan was the romantic result of his marrying a working-class woman for love.  According to his late mother Joan Irvine Smith, it was because that woman was rude and ungrateful.  But his father, the legendary horseman “Cappy” Smith, said he disowned Morton because he did nothing but drink beer all day every day, by the pool.  In the aftermath Morton experienced legal trouble – a DUI, cocaine possession.  I probably would have gotten along with him if the Age of Trump hadn’t come along and driven everybody crazy.  He sometimes speaks to the San Clemente Beach Church, where he ties in his particular brand of anti-government Covid paranoia with his reverence for alcohol:

Disowned or not, and with a huge CHIP on his shoulder the size of Russ Taylor himself, Morton never fails to drop his family’s name, as in this anti-mask speech to the Supervisors last May.  This speech makes more sense if you listen to it without trying to make sense of it, especially if you try to forget that 90+ freedom lovers were having a cow over “tyranny” that day just because Public Health Officer Dr. Nichole Quick had issued a “STRONG RECOMMENDATION” that we should wear facial coverings:

A man who doesn’t just talk the talk but walks the walk too, he later joined psychotic Scientologist Leigh Dundas in a demonstration outside Dr. Quick’s residence – with her children at home.  Dr. Quick quit her job after that, but still none dared call it terrorism.  (How could Morton ever outdo this stirring deed, but to Storm the Capitol six months later?)

Dundas at left, Morton #3, terrorizing Dr, Quick at her Irvine home. How original – a Hitler mustache!

How does a fun-loving beer drinking beach boy end up believing, and fighting for, all the crazy things Morton and his friends believe?  Well, one thing Morton said to the Times about his family rang insightful:

“You’re talking about someone who is paranoid here. My mother is the type of person who thinks there are cameras everywhere and guns are pointed at her back.  She gets her information from a network of untruths that are forming her reality about me. I have nothing against my parents. I love my parents. In a lot of ways, I think I’m just like my parents.

  • Went to DC Jan. 6?  Totally, but doesn’t seem to be suffering for it yet…

Kim Sorgente (HB)

This Renaissance Chud has been ubiquitous at alt-right protests and counter-protests anywhere within a WIDE perimeter of Surf City, for at least half a decade.  Never without sunglasses and never without his trusty white bullhorn which doubles as amplifier and truncheon, this pint-sized paunchy pugilist can not only blather endlessly from a place of White Male Victimhood and high-school machismo, he also loves to thwack people with whatever comes to hand.  So why is it the other Proud Boys hate him so much, even declaring a Fatwa on him a couple years ago?

Kim has cleaned up his Facebook notably since at least Jan. 6 – it used to be pure glory in violence, boasting about kicking BLM ass, exulting over Groypers’ macing pranks, mixed with laments for the dying Caucasian race – but lately it’s all Jesus, niceness, and G-rated praise of Trump.  Those of us who’ve followed his proud career of political violence for the last half-dozen years are surprised he’s still walking the streets. 

Bashing the local with the bullhorn!

For example, video of the Dec. 6 Bristol Melee (video from the Trumpy side themselves) clearly shows Kim to be the most responsible for the violence against the Santa Ana locals – as the three guys are staggering north up the sidewalk, away from the Trump crowd, after being maced, beaten and stabbed with flagpoles, you can see Kim, with his white bullhorn, striding past them in the street, then turn around once he’s in front of them and bash one of them in the head with the bullhorn, before setting in to ganging up on the others.  (Right, and below from 1:25 to 2:00)  

Despite all this evidence, and the willingness of many folks to identify Kim at this incident, SAPD detectives have been very, very cautious about arresting or charging him – “What if it’s just somebody that looks like him?”  they asked me.  (I wish they were ALWAYS that cautious accusing a suspect!) And so Lil Kim went on to Storm the Capitol a month later, causing sundry trouble in between.

We received an anonymous message on that story: “Nothing will happen because Sorgente is a federal agent paid to cause trouble.”  Just an anonymous message, but it makes sense, how some of these folks seem to never get into trouble.  Remember how we heard that Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarreo was a “snitch,” but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous and still creating and leading political violence – it just meant he’d purchased a degree of impunity by helping law enforcement with a couple cases he probably didn’t mind helping them with – busting a coyote and busting a drug ring.

On that note, the following two rogues’ galleries answer two questions:  Why does Sorgente ALWAYS wear shades, and how can YOU, gentle reader, pick him out of a line-up?  The answer to both is: HIS TINY PORCINE EYES!  (He is reprobate #5 in the first gallery, and in the other he’s the first reprobate in the second row.) :

But why did we refer to him as a “Renaissance Chub” earlier?  It’s because not only does Kim excel at beating on people he disagrees with, but he can also discourse learnedly on any number of burning topics.  Here he is explaining to the Board of Supervisors last August how Black Lives Matter is tied in to sexual trafficking BECAUSE… because some black neighborhoods allegedly look up to pimps:

And here he is with friends the same month outside Mayor Katrina Foley’s house, explaining to some young man (he seemed afraid to address Katrina) why masks are a bad idea:

  • But the Big Question: Did Sorgente Help Storm the Capitol Jan. 6?  So they say, though he’s been trying to hide it (and his head may not have shown in the crowds…)  See below:

UPDATE ON KIM SORGENTE:  He’s finally been arrested, March 22 (see comment below)

COMING SOON!

Joe “MAGAPIT” Vargas

Russ Taylor (Ladera Ranch)

“Swedish Scarf Guy”

Gracey Vandermark (HB)

Caroline Wetherington (Newport)

Joe & Ed Reitkopp

And then a buncha Yorba Linda thugs we’re learning about!

https://www.instagram.com/namethatterrorist/

https://voiceofoc.org/2021/01/oc-sheriff-investigating-whether-employee-took-part-in-u-s-capitol-riot/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/HuntingtonBeachCommunityForum/permalink/2804127493197869/</a

then do

shop mask free https://www.facebook.com/shopmaskfree/community/?ref=page_internal

https://www.facebook.com/groups/HuntingtonBeachCommunityForum/permalink/2811589125785039?comment_id=2811705342440084


About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist/composer in Orange County, and official political troubadour of Anaheim and most other OC towns. Regularly makes solo performances, sometimes with his savage-jazz band The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.